The Endless Loop

The spring-like days just keep rolling on. Before we know it, spring will actually be here anyways. As we have been saying, the grooming team has done an excellent job of keeping much of the mountain very skiable, given that we have not had a significant snow storm in over a month. An unnamed source, well connected, explained that they have been essentially using every piece of grooming equipment every hour that the mountain is closed to make that happen. It shows and we sure appreciate it. The official SVAM Facebook page highlighted this video yesterday:

That said, grooming was severely reduced on the Sherwood side this morning, with only the main Sherwood run groomed, and not at full width. One stripe was done on Maid Marian. Just taking a WAG, we think it has something to do with the large number of rocks appearing on that side. I know if I were grooming that terrain in a machine that costs hundred of thousands of dollars, I might need to wear adult diapers, if you know what I mean.

Fortunately, temps were warm enough today to soften off piste terrain on the Sherwood side pretty early and we spent a good part of the morning taking the “adventure lines” on each side of Sherwood Face. If you’re adept at skiing moguls, the good times are on, and not for much longer. For me, I am bringing rock skis tomorrow so I can more fully enjoy Sherwood and Lakeview.

On the front side of the mountain, groomers were busy but great. Off piste terrain that did soften included Sweet Spot, God’s Knob, Standard Run and Lower Idiots. The list of off piste terrain I tried today that just couldn’t soften enough included Tower 19 and 20, Skadi Hill, Sympathy Face and Rolls and Knolls. There’s a whole list of north facing terrain that is not even in the running for getting soft…maybe by Saturday.

Skiing is still quite good if you keep an open mind. It was good enough for California Governor Gavin Newsom, whom was spotted at Alpine this afternoon skiing with his family. Honestly, I would not have known it was him unless the friendly mountain host told me. It was the same story when football player Andrew Luck was at Alpine earlier this week.

Speaking of star power, ABC 10 News from Sacramento Ran a nice piece on Alpine’s avalanche rescue dogs. It’s a cool video, focusing on the training process.

The next storm on any horizon doesn’t show until March 7th, way out in Fantasyland. I would not bet any money on it actually appearing. As of the most recent run, it would not be the game changer many of you are looking for. Where are we at for the season? The graph below shows the sad story. We’re currently running behind 2014-2015, our last recent really dry year. We’re still running a bit ahead of 1976-1977, which some of us are old enough to remember. It was that season that my mom was dedicated enough to skip Tahoe and take us to Mount Shasta and Mount Bachelor for skiing. There’s a lot of talk about people headed to Utah, but I am still having plenty of fun at Alpine Meadows.